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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
Qasida for When I Became a Woman by Huma Sheikh is a collection of original poetry on migration, loss, and inherited memory that links Kashmir to global landscapes of exile. In For a Woman on a Train, a subway ride and a father’s murder intersect with sensory imagery of trains, bowls, and metallic echoes, merging Brooklyn and India. For Sakoon turns an encounter with a homeless man into recollections of Kashmir’s unrest, joining saffron and minarets with cardboard signs to parallel displacement and neglect. Mother’s Voice Not Dipped in the Water ties a Kashmiri flood with a mother’s call and recurring water imagery to convey distance and survival. Across these poems, Sheikh’s measured lyricism relies on repetition, image layering, and associative geography to trace memory through movement and sound.
Huma Sheikh’s Qasida for When I Became a Woman is a really creative and wonderful testament to memory and belonging, and every piece is dripping with gorgeous metaphors and an elegance in how Sheikh pulls all of them together. Her poems are otherwise simple and straightforward, and easy to dissect for readers who are new to poetry, but also strong enough to withstand the expectations of those who are better enmeshed in the art form. My favorite is For Kangris, which leans into Kashmir’s burning winters and youth deaths through pared-down verse and declarative syntax. The kangri, a small coal pot, becomes an emblem of endurance; its fire flickers through the poem’s elemental imagery of smoke and ash. The entire collection's strength lies in its refusal to romanticize pain and its unwavering tone that honors survival, as well as those who have passed. Recommended.
